Forum:Discussion
This is the official discussion page for the Arena. If you have an idea for a competition, please create a level three subheading, and provide a basic outline of your idea, under the section titles 'Tournament ideas'. If you want to discuss a topic besides this, changes to policy etc, please do so under the 'General ideas' heading. After the current Arena competition has finished, voting will be opened to decide which of the submitted competition ideas will be used for the next competition. Users are permitted to create and host their own Arena competitions with approval from the other users. Tournament ideas Fictional Game Tournament We know how to judge robots in the arena, so why not host a tournament with all the fictional robots from the Robot Wars games? There's enough info on each page to work out what to say about each robot, and I'm sure some of you will do the fights when they appear to test the result. We could even switch up the arena each heat to a different in-game one! We're all experienced enough to come up with something good. Jimlaad43(talk) 20:28, April 15, 2018 (UTC) Audited Series 9 I don't think we should do this just yet, but I feel this should at least be considered for a future competition. Basically, I'm proposing that, if we need to do another Audited series, then Series 9 is our best candidate. The most important change would be to the format - I'm not 100% convinced that the Round Robin format would work on the wikia and as a general format, it sorta sucked anyway. However, we do have another actual Robot Wars Series that featured 40 robots that managed just fine without a Round Robin. If nothing else, it'd be interesting to see how things may have gone under a different format. There are two major reasons why I'm specifically proposing Series 9 over Series 8, which had the same format. The first is that I feel Series 9 had more alternate robots we could use, which could potentially mix up the meta game quite a bit. The second is that I think most of us will agree that it was the weakest of the reboot series anyway. And whilst I'm sure most of you will probably say "There's no point, Carbide would easily win anyway", I would simply respond with "would it?" and if your answer is still yes, "so what?". After all, our Audited Series don't always end up with the same winner even when it seems obvious, and even when it does, we still have fun doing it (see Audited Series 3 and 4, where Chaos 2 was always going to win). CrashBash (talk) 21:27, November 30, 2018 (UTC) Comments Honestly, I am not a big fan of Series 9; henceforth why I support this concept. Carbide easily winning is not an issue, seeing as Panzer Mk 2 won with no objections throughout its Audited Extreme Warriors 1 campaign. Another reason to support this tournament is the bin candidates process; we could add in Big Nipper, Dantomkia, Eric (although that robot is clearly too OP for this tournament!), Gabriel (no Jimlaad, disliking the robot is NOT a valid reason to not include it), Gyrobot, Iron Heart 88 (where Toast will need to be careful when judging battles involving it :P), Mega Melvin, Prizephita, Ripper, Terror-Bull, Tough as Nails, Toxic 2 and TR2. Hence, I support this idea, although maybe after another original tournament. SpaceManiac888 (Talk) 22:18, November 30, 2018 (UTC) :That and I can still see a few robots giving Carbide some issues. CrashBash (talk) 22:22, November 30, 2018 (UTC) Dutch Series 3 It's been a long time since we've used the Dutch and German robots on the wiki, and this seems like a logical follow-up to the German Series 2 we did a long time ago. UK Series 7 had so many new-and-improved Dutch and Belgian robots that I think we can quite comfortably put together a five-heat format using 2003-era Dutch robots and some of the best robots from Dutch Series 2. Seeing robots like Scraptosaur 03 and Twister S7 in their intended environments could be really fun, and it can even be seeded based on the Dutch Series 2 Grand Final, while the wildcards like Gravity and TAN would prevent the seeds from wiping everyone out. Comments *It's certainly an idea I'd be interested to give a try. I suppose the obviou issue would be would we be able to find enough robots to fill up the spaces? We had nine Dutch robots compete in UK7 by my count so they'd obviously all go in, as would Hard...and I presume Crushtacean/Krab-Bot? That alone makes 11, and then I think there were about five or six Dutch/Belgian robots that DNQ for Series 7. CrashBash (talk) 14:53, May 24, 2019 (UTC) **Then we just pick the remaining 15 from the heats of Dutch Series 2 to fill out the rest, it’s not the most realistic method but it allows us to use some robots we barely get the chance to vote on. [[User:ToastUltimatum|'T'OAS]][[User talk:ToastUltimatum|'T']] 15:03, May 24, 2019 (UTC) **I believe there's 7 that DNQ for Series 7, going from here: Caesar, Deep Impact, PulverizeR, RCC 2, Slicer, Sniper, and Splinter. Of those, we've got practically no information about Deep Impact, pretty much only an image of Caesar, only 2 images of the updated Sniper, and a grainy qualifier video of RCC 2. Could be tricky to judge any of those 4. Combatwombat555 (talk) 15:28, May 24, 2019 (UTC) BuggleBots Format This isn't an idea for a new tournament, but more specifically a format we could potentially use. What if for a tournament we ran a similar set-up to how the web-series BuggleBots ran its tournament? I could actually see it working for Toast's aforementioned Dutch Series 3. CrashBash (talk) 08:03, May 29, 2019 (UTC) Debut Wars A random idea that popped in my head was competition that can involve robots from all series in something called "Debut Wars". As the title suggest we use any robot (such as Razer, Behemoth and/or Supernova) but instead of using their most up to date version, we use their debut appearances (such as Series 2 Razer and Behemoth and/or Series 5 Supernova). Not only does this make things interesting but it allows some allstar robots to not roam too freely, e.g. Razer won't be able to self right, Chaos has no real flipping power, Behemoth will be very weak etc. Now truth be told I have calculated everything thus far but I'm sure we'll have enough for 12 Heats with six. Diotoir the son of nemesis (talk) 10:22, July 13, 2019 (UTC) Comments *I like the idea, but Storm 2 would win the whole tournament fairly easily so I'd suggest keeping them out (and maybe one or two others). Toon Ganondorf (t ' 10:29, July 13, 2019 (UTC) ::Yeah it's possible one of two may get removed, maybe have a whole list of all debuties and allow everyone to decide on the ones to remove. The likes of Storm 2, Eruption and Carbide are obvious targets.Diotoir the son of nemesis (talk) 11:39, July 13, 2019 (UTC) *This just sounds like the Fantasy Audited wars when we find creative ways to hobble certain robots, like Behemoth (Grippers), Big Nipper (Claws) and Panic Attack Gold. Jimlaad43(talk) 11:38, July 13, 2019 (UTC) Survivor Series With WWE's Survivor Series PPV just around the corner, I had a look at the upcoming matches (some of which seem quite interesting, considering they will have NXT stars), where I suddenly had an idea. You see, Robot Wars actually has many comparisons to WWF/WWE; some of them include tag teams, triple threats (Mayhems), battle royals (10-Robot Rumble) and elimination matches (Annihilators). However, Robot Wars has never attempted something as ambitious as WWE's Survivor Series concept, which I think could work very well on the Arena Forums. For those not fans of wrestling, let me explain the concept. You have two teams of typically five wrestlers on each side, under tag team rules. To win, a team must have at least one man/woman remaining, while successfully eliminating all the opponents on the other team, through means such as pinfalls, submissions, disqualifications etc. Since we have done Annihilators in the past, I think this concept under Robot Wars rules could work very nicely. Let's have an example: B-Team (Barber-Ous 2'n a Bit, Behemoth, Big Nipper, Bigger Brother and Bulldog Breed) vs Spin to Win (259, Disc-O-Inferno, Hypno-Disc, Supernova and Vader) Suppose we have one minute intervals for each fight. If the two chosen robots (via Random.Org) were initially Big Nipper and Supernova, then chances are this fight will end in a draw, because neither will secure a knockout in that time. However, if the next two robots were Barber-Ous 2'n a Bit and Hypno-Disc, then, based on the fact the latter has beaten the former in a single blow, the demon barber would be voted out. B-Team would be down to four machines, but can still win the war. However, this now presents a challenge for B-Team. Yes, the remaining four robots are generally known to be reliable. But against five spinners, will that be enough, especially as damage will be accumulated overtime? Ultimately, I do think B-Team would come out on top, but it is not going to be pretty, I will tell you that! Henceforth, the main rules for this tournament would be: *'Only two robots face each other at one time, to fight for a duration of a minute. *'Robots can only be eliminated via knockout. Judges' decision are for wimps.' *'Crucially, unlike in Annihilators, where every time a machine is eliminated the others get to be repaired, in Survivor Series, the battle continues until one team is left standing. This means every voter has got to speculate what damage may have been caused to each machine during their encounters against one another. Hence, losing a machine early on is a huge blow for its team.' *'However, in the interests of this tournament, all robots' power sources will enable them to work indefinitely'. So, what do you ladies and gentlemen think? I might post my own Survivor Series tournament on my user blog to demonstrate how interesting this competition could be. SpaceManiac888 (Talk) 17:01, November 13, 2019 (UTC) Comments This reminds me somewhat of the Attrition Battles used in King of Bots. I'd certainly be interested to see how those sorts of things would be decided. CrashBash (talk) 17:14, November 13, 2019 (UTC) :Funnily enough, I was thinking the other day about how the King of Bots Attrition format could be implemented for certain Robot Wars competitions. I'd be intrigued to see how this format would work in a forum tournament, especially on the back of CrashBash's comparison. [[User:VulcansHowl|'Vulcans']][[User talk:VulcansHowl|'Howl']] 17:40, November 13, 2019 (UTC) Just to clarify, Space, if this tournament was given the go-ahead, by my understanding of your rules there would need to be three voting columns, right? One for voting in favour of each robot and one for voting a draw (I.E. neither robot can knock each other out within a minute). CrashBash (talk) 18:39, November 14, 2019 (UTC) :Yeah, something like below: :Just to clarify, if you think Bigger Brother will win, continue to vote for Bigger Brother. Likewise if you think Supernova would win. SpaceManiac888 (Talk) 17:51, November 16, 2019 (UTC) ::Sounds good to me. BTW, in this case I'd probably vote for a draw, because I don't think Bigger Brother's defenses would break, or Supernova's reliability issues play up, within just one minute. CrashBash (talk) 18:09, November 16, 2019 (UTC) Ragnabot - Classic Edition "What!? But CrashBash, we're literally in the process of doing a Ragnabot right now! You can't just propose another one!" Well, yeah, I understand that, but hear me out here - what if we did a Ragnabot that featured all the robots simply from Series 1 to Series 4? Before the weight limit shifted from 80kg to 100kg? I think the Classic tournament we did a while back was quite enjoyable, and we always celebrate whenever a pre-first-weight limit bot goes through in Ragnabot, so maybe it's time to give them the love they all deserve. Because, lets face it, until Mentorn finds someone who will take Robot Wars again, we won't be doing another standard version of these. CrashBash (talk) 07:52, December 11, 2019 (UTC) Comments Series 10 in the Style of BattleBots A random idea I had. For those who have seen the 2018/2019 series of BattleBots, I feel there is potential to have a Robot Wars variation. Basically, each robot will have four fights against four different opponents in order to gain a large enough win/lose ratio to reach the knock-out stage. There would also be a Desperado Tournament to automatically qualify for the knockouts and also probably a play-in match. The only difference would be, for ease, the knock-outs would have eight robots rather than 16. I picked Series 10 because it's the smallest, so it'd be easy to work with. CrashBash (talk) 20:16, January 5, 2020 (UTC) Comments Trial Events Elimination Competition Many reality TV shows take the one robot eliminated each round/discipline/event, a bit like The First and Second Wars with the Gauntlet and Trials. I know Gauntlet and Trials aren't particularly easy to judge, and we'd only need to use 11 or 12 machines, and what trials we'd use would be sorted later. Adster1005 16:00, January 15, 2020 (UTC) Comments Audited War but each episode is a different format We do a regular audited war with robots drawn into heats, but each heat is also randomised in its format. *Series 1/2 Gauntlet, Trial, Arena heat *Series 3/5 H2H heat *Series 4 3-way melee heat *Dutch Wars/Semi-Finals Losers melee heat *Series 6/7 4-way melee heat *Series 8/9 Round Robin heat *Series 10 Redemption bracket *(Us Championship 1 6-way melees) *Annihilator heat *Tag Team heat (Double the robots so two heat winners) *10-Robot-Rumble heat *Challenge Belt format *Pinball tournament *Sumo Basho Tournament *Gauntlet runs only tournament This way we'd get a chance to try each format again and judge them differently, rather than the 6 months of head-to-heads we've had with Ragnabot. Some heats would have to have different number of robots in them compared to others, and some formats will have to host multiple heats. Plus the Pinball, Sumo Basho and Gauntlet don't need a specific number for them, so they can be used as sponges to pad out if required. Jimlaad43(talk) 10:59, February 6, 2020 (UTC) Comments I'm not going to lie, as complicated as this all sounds, I'd be legit curious to see how something like this would even turn out. CrashBash (talk) 19:16, February 6, 2020 (UTC) :BTW, how about a Football tournament to go with the Pinball and Sumo? CrashBash (talk) 14:53, February 7, 2020 (UTC) The more I think about this idea, the more I like it. You could probably add Series 5/6 SF format (3 H2H plus loser's melee) to that list too. Hogwild94 (talk) 21:26, February 6, 2020 (UTC) This sounds like fun. Series 4 or 7 are the most suited due to the relative consistency. Toon Ganondorf (t ' 03:01, February 7, 2020 (UTC) :I admit, having initially skipped over this idea, it does sound like a lot of fun. [[User:ToastUltimatum|'TOAS]][[User talk:ToastUltimatum|'T']] 09:49, February 7, 2020 (UTC) Series 5 but with 4 Way Melees Not the most original ideas but one I'm kinda wanna do (even if it's not here but on user page/blog) plus it's an easy and relaxed one that could waste some time with. Basically, a retelling of Series 5, with the same Heats, robots and arguably same House Robots but in the style of a 4-way melee. Say for example Heat A would have Chaos 2 vs Storm Force vs S.M.I.D.S.Y. vs Obsidian as one battle (a combination of Battle 1 and 2 with the other melee combining 3 and 4). This could have some changes and shocks along the way, and who knows maybe we could have side events inbetween rounds (imagine Series 5 Sumo and Pinball!) I believe it may have been done on user blogs and I doubt it'll be too popular but I'll still submit it anyways. Diotoir the son of nemesis (talk) 12:10, February 6, 2020 (UTC) Comments Yeah, I'd back doing this at some point (I'd happily host it too), but maybe not now, we should probably do something light to cool down after Ragnabot. Hogwild94 (talk) 18:39, February 6, 2020 (UTC) Post-Ragnabot 3 As the Arena Forum's equivalent to the FA Cup draws to a close, it is now finally time to figure out what follows it. While I still have faith in my Survivor Series idea, there are two other suggestions that particularly appeal to me. These include Audited Series 9 where changes to the format would have certainly made this reboot series even better. But Dutch Series 3 sounds really interesting to me, and it would be nice to focus on a tournament without the British robots for a change. Are we just including Dutch and Belgian robots this time? Or are we going to essentially do a European Robot Wars tournament with machines from various non-British European countries? SpaceManiac888 (Talk) 13:28, February 6, 2020 (UTC) :I wouldn't mind doing a non-UK tournament for once, I'd say from the three there, Dutch Series 3 is my favourite.Diotoir the son of nemesis (talk) 13:29, February 6, 2020 (UTC) ::Seeing as we've just had a tournament with every robot, perhaps it's the right time to do something like the Fictional Game Tournament, or something that plays around with the battle format. Surely we could do with a break from Head-to-Heads for a little bit. Jimlaad43(talk) 13:55, February 6, 2020 (UTC) :I'd be fine with Dutch Series 3. I'd obviously prefer it to be mostly Dutch and Belgian robots, but we could still throw in the likes of Mechaniac, Snake Bite and a few lesser German machines (maybe the World Championship qualifier trio?) in there as some guest fighters. I think the only British robot we'd need to have is Crushtacean, for semi-obvious reasons. CrashBash (talk) 13:58, February 6, 2020 (UTC) Audited Series 9 for me feels like something we need to do in 2020 for the sake of checking it off the list. It was wise to skip it in 2017 amidst all the fan-made ones, but now that the dust has settled, it could be pretty fun. However, with the later stages of Ragnabot 3 being dominated by Series 9-10 machines, I think it's probably "the one to do afterwards". Therefore our leading choice is Dutch Series 3. I'd warn off using German/Austrian/Swiss machines, but otherwise fill it up with every 2003 Dutch/Belgian machine, then fill the remaining spaces with Dutch Series 2 competitors that would be fun to judge, like Trazmaniac. One format idea would be five heats with a third place play-off in each, then find two Heat Finalist wildcards through a 5-way rumble, and one more Second Round Loser wildcard through another 5-way rumble, for eight finalists - but that's just one suggestion, of course. Might come down to a two-horse race between Gravity and Tough as Nails, but there's enough competitors like Twister and Krab-Bot to make the competition alive. We'll need to pick a host, but it should be a nice fun ride. [[User:ToastUltimatum|'T'OAS]][[User talk:ToastUltimatum|'T']] 15:50, February 6, 2020 (UTC) :I don't know if this is going to help or not, but I did find this regarding the article that Tough As Nails won prior to competing in Series 7. https://ultimate-robot-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Dutch_Robot_Games_II It does list several robots that were in Dutch Series 2, and even from Dutch Series 1, but weren't in Series 7. Unfortunately, the source itself is virtually inaccessible, but it's something at least. I'm seeing there the likes of Sater, Philipper, Lizzard and even Spike, the sequel to Tyke. CrashBash (talk) 16:05, February 6, 2020 (UTC) ::Instead of Dutch Series 3 we could call it European Championship so the Swiss, Austrian and Italian robots could also be included if we need to make up the numbers. Jimlaad43(talk) 16:17, February 6, 2020 (UTC) :::Lets cross that bridge when we come to it. TOAST originally proposed a 30 robot competition, and we can probably get 30 robots from Holland and Belgium with the information we know. CrashBash (talk) 16:34, February 6, 2020 (UTC) Perhaps, having just concluded a tournament that's taken up over half a year's worth of debate here, we should have something light to cool things off a bit. I'd be fine with Dutch Battles 3, then maybe we could do Audited Series 9 and/or Audited Series 5 with a different format. Hogwild94 (talk) 18:37, February 6, 2020 (UTC) I'd love a full European Championship at some point, but happy enough with Dutch Series 3. Combatwombat555 (talk) 21:12, February 6, 2020 (UTC) I'll reiterate my thoughts again now that I've had a more proper read. Dutch Battles 3 makes the most sense for the next tournament as a light cool-down idea, but following on from that, I'm really taken by Jim's Random Format idea. Definitely want to get discussions going for that after DS3. It could take one series in particular, or even have nominated robots like A Fantasy Audited War. Either way, I'm down. [[User:ToastUltimatum|'T'OAS]][[User talk:ToastUltimatum|'T']] 12:21, February 7, 2020 (UTC) :By my calculations, we'd need at least 80 robots to cover the first few available options, and then a minimum of 4 for the Challenge Belt heat (although it'll certainly be more). Basically, we could easily audit anything from Series 3 to Series 7 if we went the one series route. CrashBash (talk) 14:52, February 7, 2020 (UTC) ::If the Audited Wars, alternate formats tournament is gaining traction, I'm happy for someone else to run it if it gets voted in over the Dutch Wars. After all, it would be different to Ragnabot in battle format, which TBH is the reason I came up with it. Jimlaad43(talk) 15:31, February 7, 2020 (UTC) :If I can weigh in, I think Dutch Series 3 would be best. It would be interesting to run a foreign series. Adster1005 15:54, February 8, 2020 (UTC) ::Seems like Dutch Series 3 is leading for now. Seeing as Toast is unwilling to be host, I am happy to take charge if no one else wants to. SpaceManiac888 (Talk) 16:58, February 8, 2020 (UTC) :::I'm fine with with that, should we put it down to a vote? Or are we more or less decided.Diotoir the son of nemesis (talk) 16:59, February 8, 2020 (UTC) ::::I'd say it's decided. Anyone against Dutch Series 3 hosted by Space speak here. Otherwise, we'll launch it after the Ragnabot 3 awards have been completed. On a side-note, is anyone up for Ultimate Free Pass version 2 with the qualifier losers? Jimlaad43(talk) 20:45, February 8, 2020 (UTC) :That'd be interesting. I'd be up for something like that, especially seeing as I missed the first. Adster1005 20:56, February 8, 2020 (UTC) ::Sure why not, it'll be funny.Diotoir the son of nemesis (talk) 21:02, February 8, 2020 (UTC) :::UFP on a user page/blog or an official tournament before/concurrent with Dutch Series 3. Jimlaad43(talk) 21:08, February 8, 2020 (UTC) ::::I don't think we need to make too much of a fanfare about it. It could easily be done whilst Dutch Battles 3 is rolling. CrashBash (talk) 21:30, February 8, 2020 (UTC)